The track was recently remodeled by the club and offered a new layout for probably 50% of the track with the main feature being a big tripple jump in wood. They also added on more astro and rubber mats to make it easier to maintain the track. This is the trend we see most track going to make it feasible for a small number of people with no budget to have a descent track.

When we arrived the day before the rain was pouring down but the forecast promised nice weather for race day. And that forecast was correct (for once!). That also meant that nobody had practiced on the new track until the morning where we have 45 minute open practice. I tried on some different tires but chose to go with some worn Astro Max. Not too much grip but enough and a good compromise between all the different surfaces this track offers, grass, dirt, wood, stone, rubber and astro.

The qualifier went well and I won it quite comfortably and set the fastest lap time for the day at 23.965. This is a quite short track but as it gets more bumpy as the day goes on you rarely improve your lap time.

Starting first for the 1/8 final I got away quite nicely but got hit from behind in the first curve. Having to drop down half the field I had a couple of laps to regain the lead and finally win it. 
When getting back to the pits I noticed the bubble on the carb having very little fuel in it. The same problem I had in the last race when I turned up the high needle too open so it got too rich. This is usually a problem you get in high temperatures but even if it was sunny I didn't notice any high temperatures on the engine or the carb. 
I decided to put on a new carb to try and see if that fixed the problem. Maybe the old carb just hade some dirt in it to not deliver enough fuel freely.

In the quarter final I got away to a clean start and had very solid race, some smaller mistakes but I still managed to lap the second car with a couple of laps left. The new carb also seemed to have fixed the problem as the bubble was now ¾ full with fuel.
But another problem appeared, everyone asked me what happened. Nothing I said, but it turned up I ended up in fifth place. A simple look at the time sheet showed they have missed four laps on me. This problem has occurred before on this track and is dues to the timing loop not extending all the way across the lane and I'm hugging the inside line as much as I can. Unfortunately this problem happened to other drivers as well before me so we had a driver meeting to discuss how to handle this. As we have a point system where you get points in every heat and also if you fall down in the B group (which I would now do) you automatically loose the possibility to score full points. 
None had a good solution and we needed to be fair to everyone, this meant I would get full points for my win but still start in the Semi B missing out on points. These can unfortunately be very important in the total for the whole season, that would really suck if it came down to that.

Being in the Semi B I had a quite uneventful race winning by a big margin, lapping the second place by three laps. I checked again to make sure the bubble looked ok on the carb and it did. So I should be good for the 25 minute final this time.

In the final we didn't recount the points (that I should be compensated for) so I had to start in fifth place, but it's quite fun to work yourself through the field and I felt comfortable with the speed and the final being 25 minutes. I got tangled up in the start so had some more work to do but it didn't take more than three laps for me to work myself up into the lead. After that I tried to just stay consistent, not drive too safely as that usually just ends up hurting you. But I drove fairly slowly on the now quite bumpy straight. I still managed to flip around once. I also wanted to have a good distance to the second place if I would have to tune or do something with the engine. But the engine was fine the whole race and I barely consumed 30% of the tank for the 25 minutes. This track doesn't let you go on full throttle in too many places.

It felt very good having my first win with the VRModelsport Phoenix car.  I had ZERO problems the whole day, not even a screw having to be tightened. It's so predictable and reliable, just what you want from a car. It jumped nicely on the table top and the double jump and handled all the bumps like a champ. 

This gave me a good confident boost going into the Euros that starts in about one week. I almost don't need to touch the car as it's clean but I'm planning to rebuild my engine with a new cylinder and piston. Other than that I'm ready!